Fadwa El Guindi is currently
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Head of the Department of Social Sciences,
Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Founding
director of and research anthropologist at El Nil Research in Los Angeles,
she
earned her B.A. in Political Science from the American University in Cairo and
her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. She had retired in 1981 from the Department of
Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she had
been a professor of anthropology since 1972. In addition to UCLA, she has taught anthropology
at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Southern
California and at Georgetown University. Her field research ranges from
Nubia, to Mexico, to Egypt, to Islam, to Arab and Muslim America. She is widely
published and lectures internationally. Her expertise on the Middle East was
sought at a White House meeting with President Clinton, at the US Senate and by
the media. She is past president of the Middle East Section and earlier of the
Society for Visual Anthropology of theAmerican
Anthropological Association.
. She serves on the Editorial Board of a number of scholarly journals.
Her book, now an anthropological classic in its third printing, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and
Resistance has been translated into Indonesian and other languages. Her
book Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory (2004) is, according to
well-known anthropologist Asen Balkci "innovative methodology, new
paradigm, a must for all anthropology courses", and is in
anthropologist Marcelo Fiorini's
words "an innovative book, the first unified view of visual anthropology,
which theoretically and methodologically breaks traditional boundaries".
In addition, El Guindi made a number of visual ethnographies (films) on
Arab/Muslim culture which have received international awards. Her
most recent book (2008) By Noon Prayer: The Rhythm of Islam is a
"groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims"
providing an innovative paradigm about the innovation of Islam and its unique
and unified rhythm.

Among her print
publications (see CV and Bio) , those on gender and the Islamic movement have become
repeatedly cited classics. Thebook
on the Zapotec, based on field research extended
over a 12-year period, El Guindi innovated 'native ethnography' , a methodology
for rigorous ethnography that involved the Zapotec collaborator/informant
in every phase, including the writing of the generalized ethnography. Dr.
El Guindi also innovated the notion of 'visual ethnography' and made visual
ethnographies (El
Sebou', El
Moulid, Ghurbal) on traditional culture of Egypt.
These films were produced at El
Nil Research, a nonprofit ethnographic laboratory and visual research
center she founded.

El Guindi has been engaged
in a ten-year ethnographic study and visual research among Arab-Americans,
particularly in Los Angeles. This includes experimentation with ethno-theater
in the representation of ethnic cultural identity. This led to the founding
in 1992 of a nonprofit art organization for Arab-Americans --Al-Funun
Al-Arabiya -- which includes a theater ensemble, Masrah
Al-Funun Al-Arabiya.

She is currently carrying out a systematic study on Khalij (ArabGulf)
Education and Labor Force Participation by Gender, funded by Qatar University
Internal Grant.

She has published
public articles and Op-Ed
commentaries about Arab sociopolitical behavior and the generative
movements within Islam in major US newspapers, including the Los Angeles
Times, the Daily News and the Atlanta Constitution. She was interviewed
by NPR, Pacifica Radio, CBS, NBC, PBS and most local and national television
news channels as well as, more recently, by the two international Satellite
stations: ART and Al-Jazeera. She lectures internationally on subjects
ranging from visual representation, to gender, to Islamic Movements. She
gives workshops nationally on Arab and Muslim Americans. El Guindi
gave presentations at the National
Press Club in Washington, D.C. on the dynamics of Islam in social and
political life of the Arabs, the
World Affairs Council, was invited by White House andmet
with President Clinton to discuss US Policy in the Middle East, the
only anthropologist, among a few scholars nationally selected, to meet
with sitting President Clinton in the Cabinet room of the White House
to discuss policy in the Middle East. El Guindi also spoke at theUnited
Nations. Recently she was invited to a meeting at the US Senate about
the relationship between Arab and Jewish Americans. She is a frequent lecturer
at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State and lectures
widely nationally and internationally.

Her recent book on the
veil
and veiling practices in Arab culture went into 2nd printing one year
after publication, is now in its 3rd printing and was widely reviewed internationally in public and
scholarly journals. It has been translated into Indonesian and other
languages. She has published on Nubia, the Zapotec, Egypt and Islam (see
links in table below). Her visual ethnographies (films) on Egypt
and Arab America are a result of field-based ethnography and anthropological
analysis.Her most recent
book which has been recently released is called Visual Anthropology. She
has recently completed several major chapters in edited volumes. Confronting Hegemony, Resisting Occupation has just been published (2005). Her most recent monograph is calledBy Noon Prayer: Rhythm of
Islam (2008).

In broad terms, El Guindi's
research has a theoretical-methodological foundation that is based on the
centrality of a structuring process and a systematic relationality that
shapes cultural systems. Her work consistently links theory with its data
base. The paradigm empirically formulated in her analyses of ethnographic
data links both notions of society and culture, connecting structure and
process, with function. This paradigm is grounded in systematic fieldwork-based
ethnography. Her theoretical position is that anthropology is a science
that brings together the human and formal elements of culture and that
anthropological knowledge cumulatively provides improved understanding
of culture and the nature of humankind, not because it seeks truth or is
based on certainty, but through the improvement of paradigmatic and methodological
tools to further discovery. According to El Guindi certainty is the realm of
religion, truth philosophy, objectivity journalism. Anthropology
is the science of uncovery of the cognitive structuring process and the
discovery of cross-cultural biological, cultural and social knowledge about
humankind.